International Society and the Development of International Relations Theory

269 Pages·2002·14.943 MB·English

by  B. A. Roberson

Contributors
Fulvio Attina is Jean Monnet Professor of European Comparative Politics
and Professor of International Relations at the University of Catania.
Tim Dunne is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Wales,
Aberystwyth.
Andrew Hurrell is University Lecturer in International Relations at Oxford
University and a Fellow of Nuffield College.
Yale H. Ferguson is Professor of International Relations at Rutgers
University, Newark.
Robert H. Jackson is Professor of Political Science at the University of British
Columbia.
R. J. Barry Jones is Professor in International Relations at the University of
Reading.
Richard Little is Professor of International Relations at the University of
Bristol.
James Mayall is Professor of International Relations at the London School
of Economics.
B. A. Roberson is Lecturer in International Relations at ·the University of
Warwick.
Ole Wrever is Professor at the Institute of Political Science, University of
Copenhagen.

Preface to the Hardback Edition
The majority of the papers comprising this book emerged from a European
Consortium for Political Research Workshop held in Limerick, Ireland, in
1992. Additional contributions by scholars concerned with current
perspectives on international society and international relations have been
included. The original purpose of the workshop was to 'reconsider', in the
wake of a disintegrating old order exemplified by the Cold War, the idea of
international society. It was to be a contribution to an alternative perspective
for the study of international relations embodying the concept of an
'international society' which contains elements of co-operation and common
values. This was what the participants in the workshop set out to do. The
first revisions resulted in the aftermath of the discussion and work of the
workshop. Further revisions are the result of the very useful advice of
Pinter's readers, one of whom urged the contributors to explore the
influence of the idea of international SOciety on international relations
theory. We are grateful to Pinter's readers for their very positive approach to
our manuscript. I particularly would like to acknowledge the valuable
assistance of Richard Devetak in the editing of Ole Wrever's chapter. Initial
work on the endnotes and creation of the bibliography was carried out by
Stephen Calleya, supported by the Warwick Research Fund. The biblio
graphy in its final form is the result of the much appreciated efforts of Unda
Bromley and Margaret Roberson. Lastly, I want to warmly thank Pinter's
editors, Nicola Niinikka and, latterly, Petra Recter, for their support, care and
concern shown throughout without which our spirits would have surely
withered.
B. A Roberson
London, March 1997
Preface to the Paperback Edition
For some time, there has been a sustained and growing interest in the
question of international society: its conception, methodology, function and
praxis, the process of its change and its expansion into the wider world. The
stimuli for this interest lie in the pragmatic concerns of governments and
others with the level of violence in the international system, and for a way of
devising institutional arrangements amongst states that would serve as a
mechanism for the resolution of international conflict. For academics in
particular there is a need to account theoretically for cooperative
developments in an international system of sovereign states that is devoid
of a central authority. This undertaking is thus a search for reality, for an in
depth understanding of the complex of activity comprising the international
system, with the prospect of discovering the nature of international society,
how it develops and how it is held together.
The European system and states has been viewed as an emerging society
of states, and has served as a foundation for the institutionalization of
international relations based on common and endUring understandings of
the interests, rules and values embodied in a constitutionalized international
order. The process by which the European state began to take shape had its
origins in the gradual development of the modem states system follOwing
the turbulent developments of the Middle Ages. The European state system
itself was a product of the Holy Roman Empire, a loose confederation of
kingdoms, principalities and other political formations, with power and
authority dispersed amongst the Emperor, ecclesiastical authorities and
alliances of lesser powers. With the centres of power and authority spread
out in this way, the political formations within the Empire existed in
symbiotic relation to each other. None was able to achieve dominance.
Order, within the constellation of these powers, had to be negotiated. This
negotiation of differences led to the establishment of formal rules not only of
political conflict but also of military engagement. This in tum led to the
establishment of structural foundations for the institutionalization of
relations between political formations: a system that provided a rudimentary
model for a society of states.
One of the most Significant results of these developments was the

1
Probing the Idea and Prospects for International Society
B. A. ROBERSON
The intention of this volume is to re-examine the current position of the
international society tradition that has emerged out of the deliberation of the
English School and other academics. The contributions to this study will
examine the conception and implication of the international society concept
within international relations theory more generally and in light of current
theoretical concerns.
The English School of international relations had some of its roots in the
concerns generated by the seemingly mindless slaughter of the First World
War. Its theoretical foundations lay in the classic writings of European
political philosophy reaching back into the Middle Ages and beyond. It was
the trauma of the First World War that brought into sharp focus the need for
a solution to conflict among states, its nature, causes and ways of organizing
the system of states to promote peace in a world in which 'faith and
sentiments' that held Christendom together no longer existed.l What did
exist was an awareness of an international community.2 What finally
emerged in the aftermath of the war was the creation of an international
organization, the League of Nations, to maintain a legal order that would
promote general peace. The hopes, however, that the League would be able
to manage international conflict through international law and international
institutions eventually foundered on the power politics of the 1930s.
To some academics, notably E. H. Carr, the policies of governments in the
aftermath of the First World War neglected the lessons of history in their
belief in the possibility of an emerging new moral world order. This hope for
a new moral age in international relations dissipated in the]apanese invasion
of ManchUria, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia and the inability of the League
to respond effectively to international crises where the great powers were
involved. The idealism of this period became submerged in power politics,
bringing into question the utopist perspective, setting off a realist-idealist
debate.3
Carr derided approaches that sought solutions to the problem of
international conflict through the application of international law and the